Red Dead Redemption Is Getting A Graphical Boost On Xbox One X

It's rare that a nearly decade old game gets updated and improved both for performance and visual output for newer generation consoles. It's an unheard of thing... except for when it comes to backwards compatible games made available on the Xbox One X, as many gamers found out when an announcement for a graphical boost to Red Dead Redemption rolled out.

Over on the Xbox News site, there's a post about Xbox One X enhancements for Rockstar Games' 2010 open-world Western game, Red Dead Redemption. This arrives ahead of the launch of the upcoming sequel, Red Dead Redemption 2, which is due out later this year for the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4.

In the mean time you'll be able to take advantage of the 4K upscaler for Rockstar's open-world game by booting up a copy of the title -- whether you have the GOTY edition, Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare, or the standard edition of the game -- and then pressing the Xbox guide button to pull up the main menu. Once the menu is up, proceed to enter into the "Settings" tab and then go over to the Xbox One X settings. Once you highlight the settings, proceed to select either "Graphics" or "Performance" from the list, which will optimize the game for one or the other.

If you want higher resolution, cleaner graphics and a sharper image, you'll want to go with the "Graphics" option, which gives you boosts in visual fidelity over frame-rate. If you prefer playing games at a hard-locked 30fps or at a variable 60fps, that option is made available through the "Performance" setting, which is quite similar to the options made available on the PS4 Pro.

Sony has been working with developers to offer similar features for many PS4 Pro games, allowing gamers to either play in upscaled 4K (or checkerboarded 4K) or allow them to play with the performance enhancers instead, allowing gamers to go from the "cinematic" 30fps to the far more fluid 60fps. Many gamers prefer the latter due to the fluidity of the control schemes, which enables gamers to have much better precision over aiming and reaction times in games.

In the case the backwards compatible titles for the Xbox One X, it means more options and more versatility in how you play the games from the Xbox 360 era.

Joining Red Dead Redemption with Xbox One X enhancement features is Portal 2, Sonic Generations, Gears of War 2, Darksiders 2 and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. It should be especially interesting to see games like Sonic Generations running clean and pristine on the Xbox One X, since it's such a visually distinct title.

Gamers can get a small taste of visual renewal by playing their old Xbox 360 titles on the Xbox One. I imagine a lot of gamers will likely go out to either pick up copies of these older games or race out to get an Xbox One X to play them with higher resolutions and smoother frame-rates than what was afforded on the Xbox 360 a decade ago.